Mostly, it was the prospect of having her staff go right to work on another election, just after working really hard on the general election.

As the final votes were tallied in county elections offices around the 4th state Senate District, it was looking almost certain that Assemblyman Jim Nielsen, R-Gerber, and Democrat Mickey Harrington would be back on the ballot, this time in a runoff election.

Very frustrated, Grubbs said she could see the matter from two sides.

On the one hand, the runoff election seemed like a big waste of time and money. She said Butte County will have to come up with about $400,000 as its share of the election. And other counties in the district will have to do likewise.

On the other hand, she said, those are the rules — that's the way democracy works.

The race for the 4th District seat was unlike other contests on Nov. 6, which had only two candidates.

The 4th District race was a special election with the names of six candidates on the ballot.

To avoid a runoff election, one candidate had to get 50 percent of the votes plus one.

Now, with nearly all the votes counted, it looks like Nielsen will fall just short of 50 percent plus one, Grubbs said in a phone interview on Tuesday.

In that case, a runoff election will be held on Jan. 8, and Butte, like other counties in the district, will need to pay for printing sample-ballot booklets, postage for sample ballots, precinct workers and other things.

"It's the same drill as for a big election," Grubbs said, adding that voter turnout for the runoff would likely be extremely light.

On Tuesday, Grubbs released 4th District vote totals for the 12 counties in the district. She said all the totals were final except for in Nevada and Placer counties, where the last votes were still being counted.

So far, she indicated, 382,186 votes had been counted.

Nielsen had 49.47 percent of the votes, followed by Harrington, of Magalia, with 27.5 percent.

Jann Reed, of Chico, had 6.58 percent, and Dan Levine, also of Chico, had 2.6 percent.

Two candidates who dropped out of the race also got certain percentages of the votes. Assemblyman Dan Logue, R-Loma Rica, had 11.96 percent, and Ben Emery, of Nevada City, had 1.9 percent.

A chain of events led to the special election. It started in January, when Rep. Wally Herger, R-Chico, announced he would retire at the end of 2012. Herger endorsed then-4th District Sen. Doug LaMalfa, R-Richvale, to succeed him.

At the end of October, LaMalfa resigned from the Senate, with two years remaining in his term. He said he was quitting then to save the taxpayers money.

Resigning at that point gave Gov. Jerry Brown time to consolidate the special election to replace LaMalfa with the general election. And that's what Brown did.

For her part, Grubbs said she was very unhappy that her staff would need to put in extra time setting up the runoff election.

"The staff was hoping to start taking a little vacation, and maybe have Christmas," she said.

Staff writer Larry Mitchell can be reached at 896-7759, lmitchell@chicoer.com, or followed on Twitter @LarryMitchell7.